Monday, 8 December 2014

Here is our science project board with all 4 groups' inquiry research on Being Sunsmart

Our title page informs others that we have done some experiments to either confirm or refute our hypotheses or educated guesses.

Cobra's group wanted to find out about whether SPF +50 in sunscreen would protect our skin against the harmful UV rays of the sun.

Keleni's group members rubbed on sun screen only on their right arm and went to play in the sun during the two school breaks,for a week and then they compared both arms to see the difference in the skin colour. They noticed that the person who had light-coloured skin, turned red but the person who had dark-coloured skin, just turned even darker.

Kingkong's group carried out a survey on children's awareness to the harmful rays of the sun and presented their results (how many children wear protective gear like hats) on a Tally chart and Bar graph.

It was interesting to see that most kids at SPS were aware of the dangers of the UV rays even though they were not wearing hats. The survey also showed us that most children were actually taking action to keep safe in the sun.

Here is a picture of the data that Kingkong collected and presented to others in their project.

But our most favourite project was the setting up a terrarium to visualise, first hand the water cycle in nature, but in a miniature form.

We all had fun collecting pebbles, gathering soil and planting little plants in a clear glass jar, when we first set up our terrarium.

Tapout's group did an observation table to record the events or things that happened over

5 weeks in the terrarium experiment. They found that the plants continued to grow because the water cycle processes (evaporation, condensation and precipitation) that was taking place inside the closed system was supporting plant growth.

Here is Avatar's group's evidence of their experiment on whether light-coloured cars or dark-coloured cars would absorb more heat when parked outside for the same number of hours.

We put two thermometers in Mrs Naidoo's silver-white car for 10 minutes, and took a

pre-reading at 9.30am and again a post reading at 2.30pm (5hours) to test the difference between the rate of heating in light-coloured cars and dark- coloured cars.

The conclusion we came up with was that dark-coloured cars like Helle's car retained more heat overnight. But the heating rates of both the cars from morning to afternoon were the same. That is 7 degrees celcius. We were blown away with the results.

So Daina, John, Teavali, Kapriyani and Tufele,'s group, Avatars wrote up their group's Aim and Hypothesis on why they think dark -coloured cars will get hotter in temperature than light-coloured cars if parked in the sun, for the same period of time. While all the other conditions would be kept CONTANT or the same, the only VARIABLE would be, the two cars of different colours -one dark black and the other silver -white.

Lizzie, Keleni, Pilimi and Khobi's group Cobras, are writing up our aims and hypothesis after thinking about what to investigate. We have been wondering how SPF in sunscreen works to protect the different shades, colours or hues of skin.

Here is Cobras' hypothesis. "We think that light-coloured skin like Daina's, would get sunburned quicker, than darker-coloured skin like Harishna's."

At first our group Cobras, did a little experiment with 4 different coloured cans. We covered one can in orange paper, the other one in white, the third one in black and the last one in green paper. We places all 4 cans on the windowsill from 10.00am to 2.00pm and then we used the thermometer to measure the temperature of each can.We were careful to keep all the conditions the same or Constant, by first taking the temperature reading of each can at 10 o' clock and placing all cans on the same windowsill at the same time, as a measure of Control. Thereafter we took the second reading at 2pm.

Chloe, Tupou, Delta and Pritesh's group called Kingking, have been wondering how Sunsmart kids at Sylvia Park School are. So we made up a set of questions in a questionnaire-form and did a survey on all the students at SPS. Then we tallied up the scores and plotted them on a Bar Graph to study the results to help us make comments on what we found and why this might be the case in our investigation.Our hypothesis is that we think that children at SPS have Sunsmart Awareness because most of them wear hats and either sit under the shade-cloth areas or they sit under the trees.

Tapout's Terrarium experiment with Harishna, Cortez, JT and Maedana was done as a whole class experiment for an explanation writing lesson.

So we in Tapout group were wondering if the water in a sealed glass terrarium might recycle itself like it does in nature. So everyday we observe all the things that are happening inside the terrarium, which sits on the whiteboard shelf in front of the class.

Here are our evidence of our hypothesis that the "no-care garden" or terrarium is able to recycle its water over and over to support plant growth over a long period of time.

All we have to do is sit tight and observe what happens inside the sealed glass container and

Sunday, 2 November 2014

Our class terrarium represents a mini Water Cycle in Nature in a closed system. The terrarium is a self-managing or self -sustaining garden.

We drew a plan of what we needed to put in the closed glass jar which was going to become our terrarium. The terrarium represents the Water Cycle in nature.

First we got a glass jar, then we collected some pebbles from our school native garden and Maedana and Kapriyani ran off to ask our school caretaker, Carol, for some soil.

Then we picked some plants from the school yard and we were ready to start our project.

We got some potato plants, a pumpkin plant and a succulent plant from our class window box. We sorted the seedlings carefully. Then my teacher planted each plant by evenly spreading them out in the transparent glass jar.

We all wanted to have a go at planting but the neck of the jar was far too narrow for us to all get into it.

Here are how the plants in the glass jar looked after they were evenly spread out to grow.

Then we added just enough water so that it was wet but not waterlogged.

Then it was time to seal it to make it a closed system like the water cycle in nature.

We used masking tape to make the glass jar secure so that no one would open or tamper with our closed system terrarium experiment.

Finally we dated the terrarium the 3 November 2014 and signed our group's names on the masking seal.

We knew that we had to have a CONTROL as well as the EXPERIMENT to make valid or true comparisons in our scientific study. So we chose to use our wheelbarrow garden that sits besides the windowbox in our class. Harishna's chores in class has always been to water the wheelbarrow garden 3 times a week, which are on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

We decided to place our terrarium in a semi-shade place, that is not in the direct sunlight.

So JT and Maedana suggested that we place it on the little white board just behind where Daina, Maedana and JT stands in the photo.

So that is where our closed system terrarium sits now on the ledge of the teacher's white board- right in front of us, for all to observe everyday and all day.

Then we took group photos to celebrated that special event of our experiment. "How would the plants in the terrarium grow without giving it any water?" Cortez and JT wanted to know.

I don't know the answer for that, let's wait and see what happens in 4-5 months"answered my teacher. "But that would be next year in 2015" cried everyone. "Well won't you still be at our school next year?". Yesss! we all cheers. "Cheers to our terrarium experiment!" all the boys cried.

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

Last week at our school assembly we were the model class and so we won Levi, SPS's care bear.

So while he stayed in our class for a week, we got him some sunglasses and SPF + 30 sunscreen to block out the harmful UV rays of the sun whenever he leaves the class to go to the hall for the assembly, once a week. So we thought 'what is good for the bear must be good for us too.'

So before handing Levi over to the next winning class. we decided to get some momentoos.

"Smack!" we showered him with 100 kisses. We are going to miss you heaps Levi, but you will be in good hands in room 18 at SPS."

Delta and Mose rubbing in sunscreen to care for the skin they are in.

Vai and Harishna are developing the right attitude in ensuring that they slip, slap and slop on sunscreen to keep safe in the sun.

As for Khobi and Caleb, they sneer at the sun, " Ah! Ah!Ah! I've got you covered Mr Sun"

We felt so proud to be on stage beside the ERO ladies on the bench at our school assembly in week 2.